Danish lawmakers have killed a controversial “fat tax” one year after its implementation, finding that the tax’s negative effect on the economy and small businesses far outweighed any health benefits. According to news sources, nations such as Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have held up the tax, which applies to foods containing more than 2.3 percent saturated fat, as a potential model for addressing obesity and other health concerns. But in Denmark, the tax has become a source of pain for consumers, food producers and retailers as the nation’s economy struggles. The Danish tax ministry has evidently said that fat and sugar taxes have drawn criticism for increasing prices for consumers and companies alike, and putting Danish jobs at risk, as well as for encouraging Danes to travel across the border to buy cheaper foods. As the tax ministry thus stated, “The suggestions to tax foods for public health…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a notice about a new system of records involving information collected from those required to submit user fees to the agency. The notice outlines the types of information collected relating to fees assessed under the Freedom of Information Act, Animal Drug User Fee Act, Animal Generic Drug User Fee Act, and Food Safety Modernization Act, among others. The notice also pertains to fees assessed under the authority of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, such as “color additive certification fees and export certificate fees.” According to FDA, this information is unclassified and can be used for “routine purposes,” a term that FDA further elaborates in the notice. As FDA notes, “[t]he Privacy Act allows FDA to disclose information without an individual’s consent if the information is to be used for a purpose that is compatible with the purpose(s) for which the…
The U.S. Senate has approved a bill (S. 743), as amended by the House, that will strengthen whistleblower protections applicable to federal employees. According to the Government Accountability Project’s Food Integrity Campaign, the new legislation, if signed into law as expected by President Barack Obama (D), will protect previously vulnerable employees, such as a Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) district office manager who reports complaints by FSIS poultry inspectors that a company has increased line speeds making it impossible for workers to remove all potentially contaminated fowl from the line. The new law would also protect a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspector who exposes falsified Salmonella records at a produce operation and an FDA researcher whose findings on a controversial food ingredient are stifled by management. See Food Integrity Campaign News Release, November 13, 2012; FoodQualityNews.com and Meatingplace.com, November 15, 2012.
Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have reportedly called for a meeting with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg after reports surfaced that the agency has received adverse event reports indicating that the caffeinated energy supplement 5-Hour Energy® may have been linked to the deaths of 13 people in the past four years. The product has apparently been mentioned in 90 filings submitted to the agency; the reports include more than 30 that purportedly involved serious injuries such as heart attacks, convulsions and a spontaneous abortion. The senators have questioned the safety of energy drinks in three letters to the agency in recent months; their latest letter states, “[W]e request a meeting with you on the steps FDA is taking regarding highly caffeinated energy drinks and to ensure they are safe for their intended use and in combination with other energy drink ingredients.” The senators also…
The American Heart Association (AHA) has issued a presidential advisory calling for renewed efforts to reduce sodium consumption among Americans. Published ahead of print in AHA’s Circulation, the advisory summarizes the latest evidence backing its recommendation that consumers reduce their sodium intake to less than 1,500 milligrams per day. To this end, the new report builds on a 2011 presidential advisory that linked excess sodium consumption to high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke. It also attempts to debunk what the advisory describes as “[r]eports of paradoxical inverse or J-shaped associations between sodium intake and CVD and stroke risk and a meta-analysis [that] have been widely misinterpreted as disproving the relationship between sodium and CVD and stroke risk and have received considerable media attention.” According to AHA, these publications “have stirred controversy and confusion in the popular press and the general population,” leading some to question the need to…
Energy drink consumption by U.S. service members deployed for combat has been linked to sleep problems, according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Titled “Energy Drink Consumption and Its Association with Sleep Problems Among U.S. Service Members on a Combat Deployment—Afghanistan, 2010,” the study found that “[s]ervice members drinking three or more energy drinks a day were significantly more likely to report sleeping ≤4 hours a night on average than those consuming two drinks or fewer.” The study also found that those consuming three or more of the beverages each day “were more likely to report sleep disruption related to stress and illness and were more likely to fall asleep during briefings or on guard duty.” The study involved 1,249 service members “using a cluster sample of randomly selected U.S. Army and Marine combat platoons deployed to Afghanistan.” All were men,…
In a move that Mother Jones magazine calls “surreal,” The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) has issued a press release using the magazine’s recently published exposé “Big Sugar’s Sweet Lies” as a “cudgel” in CRA’s battle with the sugar industry. The exposé outlines the alleged decades-long efforts by the U.S. sugar industry to influence the debate about the health effects of sugar compared to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and CRA apparently believes it helps its case. In the article “Are High-Fructose Corn Syrup Makers in Denial?,”Mother Jones author Michael Mechanic writes, “The corn refiners should be sending flowers, not subpoenas, to the Sugar Association. After all, the association’s decades-long campaign to bury evidence suggesting that its product plays a role in the ‘death-dealing diseases’—as revealed in our story—has benefited the makers of HFCS as well. If the corn refiners imagine that our exposé somehow left them looking good, well, I’ve got some…
“If even the ad industry can’t agree on the definition of an online ad, who can?,” asks The Washington Post’s Cecilia Kang in this November 2 article highlighting the “increasingly thorny debate on how to monitor advertising aimed at children when they are confronted with so many new forms of marketing online.” Kang reports that both the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission regulate traditional media but have thus far failed to restrict online advertising to kids, leading consumer groups to question the supposedly “lax oversight of digital marketing.” “There is a great deal of research that shows children don’t distinguish between content and advertising,” American University Communications Professor Kathryn Montgomery was quoted as saying. “Now on digital, there is the opportunity of more blurring of those lines, and the industry is pushing to keep definitions of online advertising broad and unclear.” In particular, Kang notes that even…
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has asked members of the U.S. House of Representatives to exclude certain provisions in the Farm Bill that would limit the government’s authority to conduct environmental analyses of genetically engineered (GE) crops. According to CSPI, “the bill language at issue would specifically limit the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s regulatory review to specific issues, such as whether the engineered crops could act as ‘plant pests’—a scenario CSPI says is not supported by science. Instead, Congress should write stand-alone legislation that would give USDA specific regulatory authority over genetically engineered crops and consider the full range of actual potential problems with such crops, such as the development of weeds or insects that were resistant to the crops’ technology, and the impact of gene flow to weedy relatives.” CSPI Biotechnology Director Greg Jaffe asks, “Why would Congress add to the public’s skepticism of genetically engineered crops by…
University of Arkansas School of Law LL.M. Candidate Lauren Handel has considered whether food-labeling provisions, such as those that would have been required under California’s Proposition 37 (Prop. 37), which voters defeated this week, are vulnerable to constitutional or preemption challenges. Had it been enacted, Prop. 37 would have required most food companies to label their products with a statement indicating that they contain genetically engineered (GE) ingredients and would have prohibited the use of the term “natural” on processed food products as inherently misleading to consumers. In her article titled “Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods: A Constitutional Analysis of California’s Proposition 37,” Handel explores the First Amendment standards applied to commercial speech and concludes that the state would not have been able to justify a ban on “natural” claims, and that whether consumers’ “right to know” about GE ingredients trumps food companies’ commercial speech rights is debatable. She also concludes that…
